


Chasing

by TippyTypewriter



Series: How to Live Here [4]
Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Ambiguous Relationships, Casual Sex, Eventual Amberpricefield, F/F, Friends With Benefits, bummer smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 18:59:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TippyTypewriter/pseuds/TippyTypewriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What do I have to do to get you to shut up?”</p><p>“Dance with me,” Rachel says, grin triumphant, and she looks good, hair wild, makeup just sweat-smudged enough. It’s a tempting proposition.</p><p>---</p><p>Chloe knows her weaknesses, and whatever Rachel wants, Rachel gets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chasing

**Author's Note:**

> Part 4 of OT3 AU, a collaboration with my good ol' pal [Briana](http://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark). She'll be up next, but I'm not sure when!
> 
> This was meant to be relatively short, sort-of sad party smut. Then I realized that both Chloe and I are feelsy babies and it turned into almost four thousand words of Chloe being emo about her sex life. Go figure.
> 
> Title from "Chasing" by Worriers.
> 
> Shoutout to [Jer](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Eiprej/pseuds/Eiprej) and [Yasha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/PineNeedles/profile) for the beta!

At the far end of Maple Avenue, not long before residential Arcadia Bay gives way to warehouses and lumber mills, there’s a big old house with a sagging porch, painted peeling red. On Saturday night, every kid in town who’s ever bought a skateboard or played a power chord or tagged a wall at Blackwell is inside. Most of them are packed into the sprawling front room, where there’s a keg in the corner and smoke rising thick against the ceiling. Most of _those_ are watching Rachel Amber, swinging her hips to a bassy pop song in the middle of it all.

Chloe isn’t. Normally at one of Benny’s parties, yeah, she’d be dancing with Rachel, maybe sharing a joint with Trevor and Justin. But tonight she’s standing off to the side, sipping bottom-shelf whiskey out of a plastic cup, grinning at her phone. More specifically, at a picture Max sent her, cheesing with Kate Marsh’s bunny.

She’s come close to letting Max monopolize her social life. Earlier this year, she wouldn’t be caught dead at a kegger with her nose buried in her phone. But the party’s the same as always, and Max—well, Max is the same in a lot of ways too, observant and goofy and easy to talk to, just like when they were twelve. A month into having her best friend back, Chloe’s exhilarated by the little things anyway.

 **i see youre all HOPPED up on tea,** she taps back with one thumb.

The stereo switches, a mellower song filling the room. Chloe’s only tangentially aware until Rachel saunters over, craning her head. “Who’re you sexting now?”

“You know who. And we’re not sexting,” Chloe says, holding up the bunny photo on the screen to prove her point.

Rachel cants a brow. “Damn. You and Max are _kinky_.”

“Fuck off.”

“I mean, I get _Playboy_ bunnies, but actual bunnies …”

“What do I have to do to get you to shut up?”

“Dance with me,” Rachel says, grin triumphant, and she looks _good_ , hair wild, makeup just sweat-smudged enough. It’s a tempting proposition.

But Chloe’s getting sick of the teasing about Max, so she rolls her eyes and turns her attention back to her phone instead, muttering, “Maybe after this drink.”

Max is telling her that the bunny is obviously the March Hare at their mad tea party, and for a while Chloe’s content to assume that Rachel had returned to the dancefloor. She’s halfway through typing out another text when she feels long arms sliding over her hipbones from behind.

“Dance with me.” Rachel’s voice comes out low and breathy and so close to Chloe’s ear, the demand emphasized now by the roll of Rachel’s hips against her ass.

Just like that Chloe’s heart is pumping. The instinct to cover those hands with her own, to grind back into soft thighs, is immediate and violent, like her veins are making a concerted effort to pull her toward Rachel. It’s only because she’s so surprised, because both of her hands are still full, that she can stop the blood where it rushes, her muscles tensing as they’re willed not to move.

All Chloe can think to do then is turn her head a little, make sure Rachel can see when she lifts her whiskey. “Still drinking,” she says, trying for unaffected but betrayed by the quiver that finds its way into her voice.

A puff of air against her shoulder lets her know Rachel heard it too.

The room is still loud. The stereo’s still playing music that sets the whole house to humming, there’s hollering from where someone’s doing a kegstand, and not three feet away two girls are giggling as a stoned Trevor lets them paint his nails. But as Rachel circles around to face Chloe, one wrist still cocked where it rests on Chloe’s hip, none of it seems to reach them. They’re in their own atmosphere now, silent and electric like lightning about to strike, and all Chloe can hear is blood rushing in her ears.

Rachel’s eyes are predatory and the brush of her fingers delicate as she wrests the red plastic cup from Chloe’s hand. She passes it off to the girls on the couch with Trevor, who shrug and down it and giggle some more, and then Chloe barely has enough time to shove her phone into her pocket before Rachel’s hands are on her shoulders, driving her into a corner near the basement stairs.

The silence breaks with a shuddering breath. Chloe isn’t sure if it’s her own or not, too taken aback, caught between a wall and a soft place. She turns, seeking Rachel’s lips, but finds only the smooth skin of her cheek when Rachel twists lower.

There’s a moment where Chloe can’t place why, with Rachel cutting a path open-mouthed from her jaw down her neck, her heart would drop. But then her memory catches up to her, playing a dozen different scenes of a dozen different parties, half a dozen different girls, up against closet doors and in bathroom stalls and, most recently, with Nicole on a desk in an empty BCC classroom.

Never kissing on the mouth, never looking into eyes, always just _this_ : teeth on her collarbone and the sandpaper swipe of tongue to soothe it, her lungs constricting her heart beating into her throat, nowhere for her to go from behind teeth she never realizes are gritted.

Chloe _does_ realize they’re gritted, this time, when Rachel lifts her head again. She licks her lips, and then she’s smiling slow and leaning in and okay, maybe the swing and the miss were coincidence.

At first when they meet it’s soft, Rachel’s glossed lips featherlight against her chapped ones, and instantly Chloe needs more. Maybe because she hasn’t kissed someone like this since the summer, maybe because Rachel’s just that good at playing her. She isn’t considering the reasons when she presses forward, slides her tongue along Rachel’s lower lip, and retreats, leaving room for Rachel to curl long fingers around her neck and chase her back.

Rachel’s been drinking White Russians. Sucking her tongue into her mouth, she tastes to Chloe like breakfast cereal. She tastes like Chloe’s thirteen and her dad is six feet underground and Max is moved away and her mom’s pulling a double shift, and Chloe isn’t happy but she’s free to do what she wants. What she wants is too much of something sweet.

Angling her head for a deeper connection, Rachel _is_ sweet. Far from chaste, but she’s taking her time, playing with the little hairs at the nape of Chloe’s neck, free hand wandering up and down her side. Kissing Rachel this way feels a lot like smoking a joint with her: fun, _effortless_ , a lazy quality to the way she explores Chloe’s mouth, like she knows she’ll end up where she needs to be. It’s easy to get lost in the feeling.

Chloe only becomes aware that anyone else is there at all when Rachel’s hand finds it way between her legs, pressing hard into the seam of her jeans, and she mewls, fucking _mewls_ , into Rachel’s lips. The friction that can be generated with two fingers tracing hard circles into denim is simultaneously too much and not enough.

She pulls back, just enough to break the kiss, cloudy eyes opening and noticing over Rachel’s shoulder that, yeah, at least a few people are staring. Chloe _is_ one to kiss and tell, but she’s not quite ready for the level of exhibitionism they’re rapidly approaching.

She’s about to push Rachel away entirely, to excuse herself, to go get some more whiskey. But then Rachel chuckles, catches Chloe’s earlobe between even teeth, and whispers, “Wanna get out of here?”

And Chloe’s body knows before she does. The rasp of Rachel’s voice arcs down her spine and coils low in her belly, the filament of a lightbulb heating, lighting her up.

Crisp air and the sound of leaves crunching under her boots clear Chloe’s head instantly as they break into the night. Briefly, she considers whether or not she should even be driving. A squeeze around her hand reminds her that she’s more drunk on Rachel than the alcohol, and she hops into the cab of her truck, takes the wheel.

Rachel waits until they’re at speed—and absolutely no longer—to scoot across the seat and curl into Chloe’s side. It’s innocent compared to what they’d just been doing, maintaining closeness like they always do, sharing space. “Your place?”

The quiet of it makes Chloe shiver. Her voice comes out lower than usual when she says, “Don’t think Blackwell’s ready for what I’ve got in mind.”

Rachel seems satisfied with that, humming and hiding her face in Chloe’s shoulder. Full seconds pass where it’s just that, warmth and breathing the same air and the pleasant hum down in Chloe’s bones.

Then Chloe can feel those perfect teeth on her neck, sliding on the tendons.

“Impatient,” she grumbles, afraid that if she says more the words will come out shaking. Rachel just hums again, the vibrations heralding the moment when she finds a bit of flesh to suck on.

Chloe breathes deep, doesn’t exhale, focuses on the road. It’s all she can do to get them home safe, to a _bed_ , where she won’t have to ignore Rachel’s hot mouth on her skin or the familiar stirring low in her belly.

She doesn’t quite manage it.

They get as far as the driveway, motor stopped, keys pocketed. And then there’s Rachel, making good on her impatience, swinging one leg over Chloe’s hips. “Hi,” is all she says on a low breath, and there are her eyes, blown _so wide_ , hazel giving way to the incalculable dark space inside her gaze, all of those unknowns.

She’s _everything_ , and whether she’s fitting herself into Chloe’s bedroom or the cab of the truck or, fuck, a corner at a kegger, doesn’t matter anymore. This is as far as they’re going.

“Hey, space cadet. I said hello.”

Rachel’s voice again. Chloe realizes she’s just been staring like an asshole. She can feel her face heating up, and rather than try to mumble an excuse through the blushing, she surges forward, rewarded with Rachel laughing into her mouth.

But Rachel isn’t taking her time now, and it doesn’t take long for playful to turn urgent. She rolls forward into Chloe’s lap, steadying herself against her shoulders, and licks into the groan it earns her. They go on like that, parting and meeting again, sloppy and rough like waves on a rock cliff.

With her hands on Rachel’s hips, Chloe’s thinking that Rachel doesn’t know where those hands have been. Thinks that maybe it wouldn’t even bother her, if she’s using Chloe like the others. But then Rachel decides to pull on her bottom lip with those _teeth_ , and heat’s spiking through her, saying _maybe you don’t mind being used_.

Chloe pushes her hands upwards along soft skin, displacing the thin fabric of Rachel’s tank top, and opens her eyes to find a Cheshire cat grin.

“Now who’s impatient?” Rachel’s all but purring, completing the picture.

“Fuck you.”

Rachel’s already reaching to remove her own shirt when she says, “As long as one of us gets fucked already,” and then it’s over her head and discarded somewhere on the dash, and this is the fourth time.

This is the fourth time, but for a moment Chloe still can’t breathe for the sight of all that skin, the last tan of summer gone, leaving the smoothest pale she’s ever seen. Chloe feels like she could dive in, and she does, locks her hands around the small of Rachel’s back and sets to dragging open-mouthed kisses across her collarbone, down her sternum, against her ribs. “You just _feel_ good,” is what she admits in between.

Either Rachel doesn’t hear or she doesn’t care to mouth off anymore, breathing hard above her, running her hands through Chloe’s hair until her beanie’s gone too. She untangles her fingers only when Chloe flicks open the clasps closing her bra, prompting her to shrug it away.

Chloe smiles against the skin when she takes one nipple into her mouth and Rachel, all too aware that rusting metal isn’t soundproof, bites off a noise in her throat and grasps once again at the base of Chloe’s skull, pulling her in.

With those fingers in her hair, Chloe’s quite content where she is, thinks she could do this indefinitely, sustain herself on the salt that hits her tongue when she draws it across Rachel’s chest, the sharp little gasps that she can pull out of her with the slightest graze of teeth.

But Chloe Price has never been patient, and when Rachel starts grinding down against her just a little more forcefully, she realizes that she needs more to sate her.

She runs her hands over Rachel’s ass, squeezing because she _can_ , and when she hits the back of her thighs she takes hold and upends her, lays her out over the length of the seat.

Rachel doesn’t expect it. She yelps, the first uncensored noise she’d made all night, and Chloe sits astride her hips feeling like a fucking king, taking a few seconds to savour it. All of it. Rachel’s always beautiful, of course, and her relaxed confidence does terrible things to Chloe’s libido, but there’s something to be said for the moment she’s unsure, eyes unfocused, completely open to whatever comes next.

It doesn’t last long. Chloe strips off her own shirt and with the flash of fabric, Rachel is all wolf again, hauling her down for another kiss, hot and rough in a way that has Chloe’s thighs clenching of their own volition.

The long press of Rachel’s torso against hers is delicious, but Chloe is helpless to resist the gentle undulation of hips beneath her. She does her best not to break the kiss as she shifts, supporting herself on her knees, unzipping Rachel’s pants and dragging them down her thighs just a little. Just enough.

Chloe’s a little embarrassed when, dipping her fingers below the cotton that separates them, she’s the first to let out a harsh sigh, an instantaneous response to the slick she finds. But there’s a sharp intake of breath a split second later, Rachel stilling entirely, and there’s no more room for shame.

She drops a kiss on the corner of Rachel’s mouth on her way to the shell of her ear. “Feel _so_ good,” Chloe says, making sure that this time it’s audible as she sets her fingers to motion, running concentric circles over Rachel’s clit.

Rachel lets go of something half-breath, half-groan, and like that she’s back, curling her arms around Chloe’s shoulder blades and rolling her hips, slow and sinuous, into her hand.

On a cool night last summer, through an alcohol and pot-smoke haze, Chloe can just remember drawing this out. Withholding pressure, teasing around the ring of muscle at Rachel’s entrance, taking her time to touch and taste and lead her toward the edge only to drag her back again.

But tonight isn’t a night for drawing it out.

Tonight isn’t patient.

Tonight is a series of increasingly tremulous breaths in Chloe’s ear. Tonight is messy but enthusiastic circles. Tonight is three fingers in Rachel’s cunt at once, deliberate and forceful how she knows she likes it. Tonight is finally, _finally_ , scoring a pornographic moan when she catches the right spot on the hook of her fingers.

Rachel drags thin red lines down Chloe’s back when she comes, and the sting of it just has Chloe driving harder, letting her ride out the stutter and the shake on something strong. She slows with her, too, withdraws gentle as the aftershocks subside, lets herself fall so they’re skin-to-skin again and finds her way to Rachel’s lips, thrusts her tongue into her mouth careless and wet.

It feels for a few moments like something ending in Chloe’s chest. But the feeling in the pit of her stomach, warm and sharp, is only getting started, so she nuzzles into Rachel’s neck, nips at her jaw.

She can’t see the smirk but she can hear it. “What can I do for you?” Rachel asks, and they both know what the answer is but her voice is still thick and a little bit gritty and frustrating in a different way entirely.

Chloe thinks she could get off on that voice alone, given enough time. Time they don’t have right now. “You can do,” she just says, taking Rachel’s hand and guiding it between her own legs, “this.”

“This?” Rachel’s pulling the same shit she was at the party, massaging the seam of Chloe’s jeans. She sounds smug as hell.

Hell sounds kind of good.

Chloe huffs in her ear, hips canting all on their own in search of more pressure. “No. I need…”

Rachel must pick up on how high, how breathy her voice has become, because she leads her through the catch in the words, fingers slowing. “Priceless,” she husks, “just tell me what you need me to do.”

The nickname, this late at night in that tone of voice, sends a tremor through her, and this time when Chloe whines in the back of her throat she isn’t embarrassed. “Just touch me. Fuckin’...no over-the-clothes handy bullshit. Wanna feel _you._ ”

“I think I can do that,” Rachel says and laughs, presses a kiss somewhere into her hair, tries to wiggle her hand into Chloe’s pants. It doesn’t work. “Your dumb skinny jeans are too tight. Up.”

Groaning like it’s a huge inconvenience—and at this point it really _is_ , abdomen clenching in protest to the loss of contact—Chloe sits up again. The air around them, compared to Rachel’s warmth, has her shivering, the metal threaded through her nipples cooling too quickly against her skin.

It seems Rachel has a dirtier version of the same thought, because she brings her hands up to cover Chloe’s breasts, rolling her thumb over the flesh and then tugging one of the piercings, just enough to smart.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Chloe whimpers, forgetting her hands at her fly entirely and biting down on her lip.

“Sorry.” Rachel doesn’t sound sincere, very clearly enjoying the display of Chloe rolling her hips forward unconsciously on the sensation. “Should probably let you get those pants off, huh?”

Chloe forces a stream of air out through her teeth and nods. It takes her another moment, but she steadies herself enough to unzip and shimmy out of her jeans.

Rachel pinches the other nipple as soon as she’s free, smirking, and Chloe can’t do _much_ in retaliation because suddenly she’s canting her hips again, suddenly she can feel how close she is to the contact she’s been waiting for, but she _can_ lean back down for more kisses.

The plan backfires horribly. Where Chloe’s become sloppier, Rachel has regained some of her finesse, and it seems she knows just when to press in until their teeth clash, when to delve her tongue into Chloe’s mouth, when to pull away and return from another angle of attack with force enough to bruise.

It’s so encompassing that Chloe doesn’t notice Rachel’s hand is on the move until it’s between her thighs, cupping her through her underwear, fingertips curling experimentally. Always teasing.

Chloe rocks down into the touch, tears herself out of the kiss so she can look Rachel in the eye. “C’mon. Please,” she says.

Rachel’s smile is crooked and eyes bright and Chloe almost regrets pleading with her. Shit like that only ever went to her head and—

It works. Rachel tugs the fabric aside and Chloe drops her head forward onto the seat because she is so, so wet, more than she’d realized, and Rachel is doing fucking magic tricks with her fingers and every sensation that she’s felt since being backed into that corner is multiplied now, converging to a hot point that digs into Chloe’s very core.

She concentrates on that, losing herself to the art of finding a rhythm to match Rachel’s. She grinds down on her fingers when they gather wetness at her slit, chases the pulses of pleasure that explode from her clit when a thumb slides against it, bears down when one long finger and then another are thrust into her.

She doesn’t know whether she’s been holding her breath the whole time or letting forth all manner of embarrassing little noises, but she does know that at some point, when it starts to build, she breathes Rachel’s name on repeat into her clavicle. She does know that at some point, when it feels like her body’s a firecracker about to pop, there’s a high keening whine. She knows that after that she breaks.

For long, beautiful moments, she doesn’t know anything at all except colours bursting behind her eyelids.

When she comes down, there’s some part of her left that knows she should feel put back together, but she tells that part to shut up and ignores the sense of misalignment as she lifts her head and sits back on her haunches. Rachel’s hand is still on her thigh, and she takes hold, not to ground herself but to emphasize her joke. “Sure you never took piano? Guitar?”

“Nope.” Rachel tries to wiggle her fingers even as they’re held, smile turning toothy. “Can’t blame my mad pussy game on rich parents. It’s all natural.”

Chloe scoffs and leans down to shut her up with a quick peck. This time it’s effective, in that it doesn’t result in rutting and a bunch of dumb sex-kitten sounds. “We should put our pants back on so you can keep it in yours.”

“You kinda just proved you don’t want me to keep it in my pants.”

The memory of her own voice begging  is too fresh. “Blackwell does. And speaking as your ride, I’m really not in the mood to be caught with a naked co-ed on campus.” Chloe lifts herself up and starts hunting for her pants to prove she’s serious.

They’re silent as they dress, silent when Rachel fishes a cigarette out of the half-empty pack in the glove compartment and Chloe has to light it for her, silent as the truck’s engine sputters to life again.

On the drive back to Blackwell, Chloe can see her knuckles white around the wheel, and in her periphery there’s Rachel riding low in the seat with her feet up, tendrils of smoke rising to the cracked window, that calm smile just visible passing under streetlights.

She looks the way Chloe knows she should feel: like they’re just best friends blowing off steam on the weekend, like all the tension is gone. But if anything’s gone, it’s something that Chloe misses, something that kept her from feeling guilty while passing Max’s childhood home earlier in the night, something that gave her the strength to look Rachel square in the eye. Something that Chloe needs now, but here she is, keeping her eyes on the road, unable to shake the feeling that every window on every house is staring her down.

“Thanks for the ride. Both of them,” Rachel says when they roll to a stop in the parking lot, wiggling her eyebrows. She tosses her burned-down cigarette out the window and throws her arms around Chloe for a goodbye hug.

Chloe just hopes the laugh she barks into Rachel’s ear sounds genuine. “Anytime.”

She doesn’t listen to music on the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sort of a sad clown this week, but rest assured, I see all of your feedback and it's very, very appreciated. Hit me up on [tumblr](http://holdsteady.tumblr.com/) if it please you and we'll keep this circus going.


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